Week of November 10-14

Since the field trip to the Burchfield Nature Center, we've spent time looking at the photographs and talking about our experiences there.  I asked the students what they wanted to do to share our experiences with the rest of the school.  One boy, Camron, suggested that we make collages out of the materials we found at the nature center (leaves, rocks, sticks) using the photographs. These are turning out to be really interesting pieces of art. 

I love how she created the portraits out of flower petals and leaves.

A work area for busy students.

As we were looking at the first snowfall of the year, we noticed a tiny beetle on the window.

The second graders have been investigating the idea of fear.  They were fearful of Baba Yaga, the ballet, and the hawk was fearful of them. Since they are studying weather, we talked about weather conditions that people might fear. I asked them what fear feels like. 

You start shaking.

And your heart beats really fast. 

And you jump!

Your heart beats like beep beep.

No, faster than that. 

Your body starts shaking. 

You start breathing really fast. 

Out of breath.

People might fall down when they see something scary. I saw it on TV. 

You can get a heart attack. 

We shared our stories about storms and then I asked the students to draw what fear looks like. They were then encouraged to choose the material they thought would best allow them to give color to their story. I was surprised that they were divided between tempera paint, watercolor paint and colored pencils. I wondered if they would choose the same materials, but they genuinely made choices based on their comfort with the material.